California Legislature Holds Joint Fast Food Wages Hearing

California lawmakers are looking at the cost fast food jobs might pass on to state taxpayers. As Max Pringle reports from Sacramento, Wednesday’s hearing was based on a recent UC Berkeley Labor Center study.

The study estimates that more than half of full-time fast food workers rely on public assistance, which costs California taxpayers more than $700 million per year. The Center’s Ken Jacobs says the study contradicts a lot of assumptions about the average fast food worker.

“More of the workers are parents raising a child, than are teenagers, 18 or under, living with their parents,” says Jacobs.

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It’s a hot afternoon in Sacramento’s Oak Park neighborhood. Teenagers are out of school for the day. Some have beverages in their hands. Kirk Allen is sixteen years old:

It looks like California’s minimum wage will go up next year for the first time since 2008. Ben Adler reports from Sacramento on the deal announced today by Governor Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders.

Under the deal, California’s $8-an-hour minimum wage would rise to $9 in July of next year, and then to $10 in January of 2016. That’s a faster pace than the original bill that’s been moving through the legislature this year. But it does not include automatic adjustments for inflation, as was previously proposed.

A bill that would gradually increase the California minimum wage to $10-an-hour has passed the State legislature and is on its way to the governor. It would be the first increase in the minimum wage in six years.

Democratic Senator Bill Monning says if you’re a Californian subsisting on the current state minimum wage, you’re living a second class existence.

President Obama’s call for increasing the minimum wage in his State of the Union address this month could face a tough road in Congress. But a proposal in the California legislature could stand a better chance. Ben Adler has more from Sacramento.

California’s current minimum wage is eight dollars an hour. A bill at the State Capitol would bump it up gradually over the next several years to $9.25 an hour … then require annual increases for inflation. UC Berkeley labor economist Sylvia Allegretto says too many Californians are underpaid: